Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS? (They never learn anything. As Bra

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/11/justin-fox-what-weve-learned-from-the-financial-crisis-noted.htmlWHAT DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

    (They never learn anything. As Brad Delong demonstrates yet again.)

    What “we” Learned is more interesting.

    (a) Capital flows were catastrophically risk producing.

    (b) Regulation of financial instruments was too weak to prevent fraud on a massive scale, and government created the incentive to commit systemic fraud, and the need to conform to systemic fraud because of a lack of regulation.

    (c) That the state allowed, and encouraged, the privatization of gains and the socialization of losses.

    (d) That the state still prevents individuals and organizations from suing individuals and institutions from regulating company, and financial system behavior via the courts, by declaration of standing, as a means of preserving the political right and responsibility for regulation of those institutions – and thereby creating the incentive for political influence and corruption. That they both create the problem and then offer to solve it isn’t lost on some of us.

    (e) The Austrian theory of the trade cycle is correct, yet again. Expanding credit causes misallocation and eventually, structural unemployment.

    (f) That the left blocked attempts to produce a compromise deal for spending that suited left leaning supporters, and reforms that suited right wing supporters. And that this block continues today.

    (g) We tried very hard, and, it looks as though it is possible to bankrupt the state if we work at it long enough. And either we bankrupt it or it bankrupts us and our families. Our view is that our families are family and that the state is an arbiter, not that all citizens are ‘family’.

    BUT THEN AGAIN, We aren’t positivists. 🙂 And the left is. Because it’s convenient.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 10:51:00 UTC

  • precise but fun. 🙂

    http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/11/everyone-in-world-needs-at-least-4000.htmlNot precise but fun. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 07:39:00 UTC

  • Bitcoin bus, train and taxi fares? hmmm

    Bitcoin bus, train and taxi fares? hmmm…

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 07:32:00 UTC

  • LIBERAL ATTACK ON BLACK CULTURE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BLACK FAMILY ‘BY STUP

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzNYCPZXvlwTHE LIBERAL ATTACK ON BLACK CULTURE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BLACK FAMILY ‘BY STUPID WHITE PEOPLE’.

    (I mean, colonialism, communism, and our evangelical export of democracy wasnt enough damage? We need to destroy a whole Race’s chance of economic success?)

    Liberals only like black people that act like they desire them to. Because when black people are commercially successful that means that liberals can’t conspicuously consume status signals by demonstrating that they’re higher than these ‘pitiful’ people who need the help of gracious (selfish destructive) liberals.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 06:37:00 UTC

  • LOOKING THROUGH MY ANNUAL STRATEGY DOCS FOR THE 00’s. (personal)(entrepreneurshi

    LOOKING THROUGH MY ANNUAL STRATEGY DOCS FOR THE 00’s.

    (personal)(entrepreneurship)

    Didn’t realize I was carrying them around on my hard drive. 🙂 It was entertaining. Looking back over more than a decade, six months of long discursive documents at a time, and sort of re-living the experience.

    One thing that I tried, other than ‘sovereignty’ for employees as a cultural and recruiting strategy, was to follow the Good To Great data on internal production of talent. I had always had the opposite view, and the GTG idea worked. I don’t really buy the GTG simple message thing. I mean, you need to be very good at what you need to be good at. But that’s just a starting point.

    DAY 0 Collecting the founders for an industry opportunity.

    DAY 1 Owner-Operator Goals. (must be the same)

    DAY 2 Basic market strategy given the era, location, customer base.

    DAY 3 Minimum capital strategy – how to do it for free or less. 🙂

    Year 1 Organizational culture, processes and systems

    Year 2 Talent acquisition at all costs (create a magnet)

    Year 3 Building a management team, and systems from within

    Year 4 Extending the product and service line through acquisition.

    (I start to see the economy at catastrophic risk, and with it, Microsoft’s future. And these two events mean that if I don’t do something the future is unsustainable.)

    Year 5 Extending the geography through acquisition

    Year 6 Extending growth rate by adding capital.

    By now I can see that the economy will collapse fairly soon and that it will stay down for a very long time, and that I will need to sell the business OR get enough cash to go on a buying spree after the crash. But that with our high dependence on Microsoft and our regional basis, It’s a death sentence to try to build a large company

    Year 7 Increasing the short term value of the company in prep for a raise, trying to beat the obviously-collapsing economy.

    Didn’t work. Why? Couldn’t get the data from accounting.

    — crash —

    Year 8 Selling off a profitable and large section of the business.

    Only mistakes I made that were really big, was that when I resigned I didn’t stay resigned. 🙂 Should have just stuck with it. Loyalty and all.

    Won’t do that again. 🙂 lol

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 03:56:00 UTC

  • PROGRESS REPORT : Dear Diary (personal) In ten years, with two bouts of cancer,

    PROGRESS REPORT : Dear Diary

    (personal)

    In ten years, with two bouts of cancer, and as a consequence, two more serious illnesses requiring surgery, followed by divorce from a long happy marriage, and the near destruction by an investor’s greed ignorance of the $100M company I built during that period despite these ‘challenges’.

    I set out to change my life, to leave the war-zone of that company behind me (check), to lose weight (check), to write at least half time (check), to treat each day as a precious gift to enjoy (check), to build a smaller company where I had more sovereign control (check) and less unnecessary stress herding not-very-bright-cats (check), to find a woman who was my dedicated friend and partner, not a life draining dependent (check). 🙂

    And I’m still building a new (and probably better) company, with better people, and writing what I think is pretty good, durable philosophy that’s reforming libertarianism from a rhetorical, moral and preferential basis, to a scientific and necessary one.

    Life is tragic, comic or heroic.

    It’s a choice.

    My advice is to choose. 🙂

    It is always better to be a warrior than a slave.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 02:50:00 UTC

  • PROGRESSIVES ARE IN DENIAL…. ….over the immorality of GROWTH via CONSUMPTION

    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-generational-injustice-of-social.htmlWHY PROGRESSIVES ARE IN DENIAL….

    ….over the immorality of GROWTH via CONSUMPTION and IMMIGRATION, rather than GROWTH via CONSTANT POPULATION and INVENTION.

    Because if they don’t stay buried in denial, they have to admit that their greatest ‘achievement’ of the 20th century was a catastrophic failure that destroyed the inter-GENERATIONAL system of calculation, cooperation and incentives.

    You know, there isn’t much difference between the necessity of money and prices for temporal coordination, and for the necessity of credit and interest for short inter-temporal coordination, and for the accumulation of wealth, and borrowing for long term, intergenerational coordination. These means of calculating are necessary, not arbitrary.

    FACTS

    The following are true;

    (a) consumption requires that population increases.

    (b) growth requires that innovation increases

    (c) consumption is not growth it is expansion – there is a difference.

    (d) consumption can finance growth.

    (e) the limit of consumption to finance growth is determined by the rate of invention produced by the financing of consumption.

    (There is a tidy graph defined here, but I”m not interested enough to go draw it, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination.)

    I don’t need to bring up that growth via consumption is dysgenic, and growth via invention is eugenic. We have to think about THE PLANET after all.

    I also don’t need to bring up that growth via consumption is the (mindless) female reproductive strategy that depends on regulation by nature, and that growth via invention is the (mindful) male reproductive strategy, and that this largely provides the explanation for the differences in voting behavior.

    NO FREE LUNCH

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 02:31:00 UTC

  • That’s my girl. Love that look she gives me. 🙂 In less than two seconds she can

    That’s my girl. Love that look she gives me. 🙂

    In less than two seconds she can change from that peaceful loving expression into Sergeant Slaughter, principle disciplinarian of all masculine infractions, high priestess of finger-wagging, and champion of relentless, passionate, argumentative criticism that would drive Clarence Darrow into kneeling, shaking, tears.

    I love tough women

    Sure. Like all other guys, I love the sweet little feminine ones. But I mean, I’m kind of a barely domesticated gorilla and I’m always afraid of breaking them somehow.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-09 15:36:00 UTC

  • Dear FB. I know that you think Philosophers and Scientists are very different fr

    Dear FB.

    I know that you think Philosophers and Scientists are very different from Musicians and Actors. But you know, there are those of us who pretty much feel about philosophers like ordinary people feel about musicians and actors.

    So. Please stop treating me like a commercial proletarian. OK? Thanks. Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-09 15:23:00 UTC

  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PAIN TOLERANCE I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that

    ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PAIN TOLERANCE

    I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that the difference between entrepreneurs and other people, is largely (a) pain tolerance (b) extraordinary competitiveness and (c) unhealthy confidence bordering on ruthlessness.

    I mean, I’m burning through a tremendous amount of money building Oversing. It HURTS just to think about it. It hurts largely because of how hard I had to work to make that money.

    But the flip side is that I can control it, and make it what I want it to be, without compromise. And If I’m reasonably successful, my return on investment will be about 100x or so.

    Entrepreneurship isn’t for the weak or the timid. That’s for sure.

    Edison said mentioned Inspiration and Perspiration but somehow he forgot to mention risk and pain tolerance, myopic and obsessive dichotomous thinking, and the desire and ability to sell ideas. ‘Cause selling is what it takes to do almost anything.

    “SCHUMPETERIAN THINKING” : the love of creative destruction.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-09 15:12:00 UTC